The transportation industry, whether it be highway trucking, rail cars, airplanes, barges and shipping, transport hazardous materials, chemicals, wastes and highly flammable fuels all over the world. These transportation systems move dangerous and sometimes lethal quantities of material through cities, neighborhoods and areas that if an accident occurs could kill hundreds of people. Once thought of as safe transportation devices some of these devices, for example airplanes, have been turned into lethal weapons by terrorists killing thousands of people.
The OSHA Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) requires all hazardous materials in the workplace be labeled in a manner that warns of any hazards the material may present. There are two methods of labeling, the first using the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) diamond system and the Hazardous Material Identification Guide (HMIG) square system. Both systems identify a health hazard, a specific hazard, a fire hazard and reactivity of the material that is labeled.
The United State Department of Transportation (DOT) require that one of these system labels be mounted and located on transportation devices so as to be identifiable to emergency personnel in case of an accident or emergency. The information identified on the NFPA or HMIG label assists emergency personnel in assessing the emergency situation so that they may be able better to contain the situation and/or save lives. However, the labels make identification of a hazardous material in a container or transport device available to everyone. All an individual needs to do is study what the particular label colors and codes mean in the NFPA or HMIG systems. A terrorist could identify, for example, a rail car full of nuclear waste. The terrorist could highjack that rail car and drive it into a city with a bomb and explode it killing and injuring hundreds if not thousands of people.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,078,251 issued to Landt et al., entitled “Integrated Multi-meter And Wireless Communication Link,” identifies objects through retrieving a template associated with an object. A user must retrieve the template prior to interrogation of the object and then load object identifier information into the template before downloading the data to a host. This patent is not readily adaptable to accept NFPA or HMIG hazardous material labels if used as described in this disclosure. Furthermore, the method and system would consume precious time when emergency personnel need to quickly identify a particular hazardous material.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,170,746 issued to Brook et al., entitled “System And Method For Tracking Drugs In A Hospital,” uses barcode scanning and printing to reduce errors in tracking drugs. This system uses a keyboard and a barcode scanner to identify a drug and track its use. This requires user interaction on the keyboard which is part of a local area network. This system does transmit locally by RF wireless. It does not use a wide area network allowing the system to transmit or receive NFPA or HMIG information to and from a variety of remote locations as described in this disclosure. Furthermore, the user must interact to update information files if this drug tracking system is to properly operate. The method and system as described in this disclosure for identifying hazardous materials does not require a user to update files, although the user may update files if desired.
In another, U.S. Pat. No. 6,641,052 issued to Baillod et al., entitled “System And Method For Authentication Of The Contents of Containers,” teaches the authenticity of container contents is obtained through a RFID marker integrated into a anti-tampering device. This system is not readily adaptable to accept a NFPA or HMIG hazardous material labels if used as described in this disclosure. Furthermore, the NFPA and HMIG system as described in this disclosure does not require a mechanical type anti-tampering device.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,729,540 issued to Ogawa, entitled “System For Managing dynamic Situations Of Waste Transporting Vehicles,” uses position measurement along with barcodes to identify the location of a vehicle. This system transmits manifest slip information on waste material and is adapted to a particular non-universal format. The system and method of this disclosure uses the HCS universal NFPA or HMIG format for identifying hazardous materials.
What is needed is a simple method, system and apparatus for effectively identifying what materials are in containers and transportation devices that would allow only emergency and police personnel to identify what is contained therein.